Alex's Roman Holiday : Who Needs Maps?

Our bodies are feeling the exhaustion of jet lag today.... All of us woke up at 3 am for some reason and couldn't fall back asleep! Also, I didnt think there was a pillow on my bed, but I turned my sheets down and there it was but my blankie folded up had more support (yes, I brought my blankie to Rome). We all added new pillows to the shopping list.

But once the sun rose I was in the best mood in the world waking up in Rome. I opened all the shutters and went out on the balcony right away. We have a few cats that live right below in the courtyard. CATS ARE EVERYWHERE ewww. There even was an old man riding a bicycle with a cat on his shoulder.......

Apparently there is a huge political debate going on in Italy about what to do about the cats.

We had a welcome breakfast with the program. Croissants, cappuccinos, and blood orange juice, my kind of breakfast :) The directors of our program are great. I don't think I will ever get bored of the Italian accents! We had orientation for a few hours and then they took us all to lunch at Villa Torlonia which was once Mussolini's summer home, but is now a huge park. The restaurant was called La Limonaia and was absolutely delicious. We started the meal off with a toast of proseco and platters of prosciutto and fresh mozzarella. Next we had rosemary and olive oil flatbread and an assortment of fried foods. Our director, Ana, said the Romans love to fry anything. We had fried stuffed olives, mozzarella, and vegetables. We thought that was the whole meal, so we stuffed ourselves, but they just kept bringing out plate after plate of Roman specialties like different types of pizzas and cakes. My stomach has never been so happy. We keep talking about how much weight we are all going to gain, but we seriously work it off with how much walking we have been doing. My legs are so sore!

So tonight we had the wonderful idea of checking out the Piazza del Popolo. We had the even more brilliant idea of walking there instead of taking the bus. It was probably a sign that the night was not going to go the way we planned when we got lost five steps out of our apartment.... It was supposed to only be a 45 min walk and ended up being an hour and a half wandering through the parks of the Villa Borghese in the dark. It was kind of a horror story waiting to happen (don't worry Dad we were very smart and safe :) ) The lights of civilization looked like heaven to us! We did get some good photos out of the journey at least (see below). The entire time Christine lead the way with her iphone map while we all took pics and I was literally just pointing out and almost fainting at every single beautiful building. But once we stepped into the piazza it made the long trek totally worth it. There were so many sidewalk cafes and very nice shops like Herve Leger and Tory Burch lining the avenues. I literally have been continually in awe with the beauty of Rome.

We were absolutely exhausted and way past hungry at this point and most of the restaurants and shops seemed closed, but an older man who had seen us walking waved us into his restaurant. It was called Risto Brunettis. We didn't realize it at first, but his restaurant was closed as well, but kept it open "for the spice girls". It was the prettiest little place with string lights and family photos covering the walls. We ordered a bottle of the house wine for our table and for our Antipasti we had Bruschetta misto: a mix of eggplant, pesto, olive oil, and the traditional tomato. I ordered the Cacio del Pepe which is pasta with a parmesan creme sauce and lots of black pepper. Incredible. I havent had one piece of food that I havent liked yet. We definitely were not up for the walk back home so we took a cab back and it only took 9 minutes...... wow we really were lost. We also learned the correct way to pronounce our address from the cab driver because he had no idea where we were talking about first. We all (including the cab driver) repeated the word "forli""grazie" and "si" while laughing the entire ride back. Incase you were wondering, there is an accent over the "i" you have to stress the letter.

Oh, by the way, we told two groups of our friends to meet us at the Piazza around 9. We didn't get there until around 10:30 and we haven't gotten our Italian phones yet so the only way we can message is if we have Wifi. We gave up on meeting them first because we were exhausted and secondly we actually had no way of communicating with them. At the end of the night we made it back to the apartment and got a call from both of them saying they met up with each other instead. At first we felt bad but I guess we just helped them to make some friends!

(On a side note: the people here are WONDERFUL. They are so welcoming and have been so helpful. But we have already experienced the whistles, honks, and "bella"s wherever we go. Our police officer on campus said the national Italian sport is not Futball but "women". The first night, I walked into a market and just smiled at the man behind the counter and the first thing he said to me was, "bella!" I didn't know how to respond so I just laughed and awkwardly walked away..... but now we are getting a bit used to it, we were told to do just as the italian women do, "pretend they are ghosts".